Some times its hard to be a healer

Ahhhhh, Tammy Wynette, the Queen of Country:
But the greatest version, from Bob's Country Bunker

Sometimes its hard to be a healer
Giving all your mana to just one tank
You'll have some aggro
He'll get it back tho'
Doing things that you dont understand

But if you want loot, be sure to heal him
Even though a tank and spank

And if you want loot
Be sure to heal him

'Cause after all he's just a tank

Stand by your tank
Give him your HoTs and shields

And save all your cooldowns

For when the boss enrages


Stand by your tank
And tell the raid you'll heal him
Keep giving all your HoTs and shields

Stand by you tank


So I spent more time on my tank last night than I have in the past few weeks.  It's a tough balance for me at this point.  I want to pull mobs as quickly as the pallies and the DKs do, but my AoE is still not nearly good enough to get away with as aggressive pulling as those guys.  Especially in PUGs where the AOE starts even before I finish my charge.

My healer last night is a gulidie who is gearing up his resto shaman.  We also brought 2 guildies for dps, so it really did go pretty smoothly.  But, I am realizing that I need like 200 more Triumph badges.  That's just for my tanking set.  My dps set is really sad.  So that plan is to do my daily on druid and priest, but to farm more on the tank.  The good news?  He's a tank, so I pretty much get in a group as fast as I can hit the button.

I'm not bad, I'm just geared that way

It was inevitable.  I finally ran into a random group with a bad healer.  Resto druid with gear score under 4k, and a few pieces of cloth with +hit on them.  He specced properly.  In the same group we had one good mage, and a very green DK and a somewhat afk rogue.

We rolled into DTK and kicked ass.  We aoe-d all the trash pretty easily.  The rogue kept accidentally pulling the wrong groups of mobs, but somehow my shockwave would be off cooldown and I'd charge in and stun the group and they'd all be mine.  I came in 3rd in dmg (and my warrior is not a dps machine as prot - or as fury for that matter).

Anyway, I am much more confident tanking in random heroics now.  With such a mediocre group to fly through the instance so easily was very reassuring.  I still think warrior tanking is the 4th option tank-wise for most encounters, but seeing as how my DK has no gear, my druid hasn't been feral since level 69 and my paladin is level 34, I really don't have much of a choice.

Tanking Teams

Setting up a tanking team can be tricky.  Ultimately, 'bring the player, not the class' is probably MOST true with tanking.  Today I heard tanking described as 30% science and 70% art.  I think that is a little generous, but in essence, it's true.  We've all run in PuGs, or in VoA with a MT or OT who has 45k health, but forgets to pick up some adds.  I've seen tanks try Koralon with 52k health who figure that they can just stand in the fire and 'get heals'.  In tanking, perhaps more than in other classes, your 'rotation' is secondary to your objective.  Gear certainly helps in tanking, but there is a wide range of acceptable gear for the content is available right now.

The most important thing about tanking is having a tank who WANTS to tank.  Personally, I get burned out from tanking.  I can do it for a while, but then I need to move to something else.  There really is much more pressure tanking.  For healers, the pressure is similar, but I've spent a lot of time doing both, and personally, I feel twice the pressure tanking as I do healing.  The 2nd or 3rd tank job is another role that is challenging on its own.  I usually feel like the second best (or third) and that is usually not a great feeling.  It does take a special motivation to want to be a tank.  Getting 2 people totally dedicated to it is essential.  Having 2 people ready to fill take role, while primarily doing something else is also needed.  We use 3 tanks on certain encounters.  Most of the time we just need 2, so having one tank, who can dps well, or provide extra heals, is a great benefit.

In a good raid, everybody is comfortable with their role for an encounter.  They fill that role, and if able, help others too.  The MT pallie who has a minute to sit around waiting for Onyxia to drop, and gets off some heals  . . .that guy is a hero.  The DK OT who changes his presence for phase 3, swaps out the weapons and piles on 750 more dps . . . that is somebody who understands his class, and his ability.  The OT warrior, who gets the debuffs up on the mobs, move the vigilance around to help folks reduce their threat . . .I want that guy on the team.